Faint Praise for Telepresence
What is Telepresence?
Telepresence is “remote control”, brought up to date. In telepresence, one uses the glove-and-goggle input-output devices of “virtual reality” technology, along with telecommunications, for real-time control of a distant robot. The Telepresence Equation is:
TP = VR-IO + Telecom + Robotics
By “VR-IO”, I mean “intimate multimedia”: glove-and-goggle interfaces. Some utopian romanticists have proposed closer connection, even up to surgical implants. To this I say, “Not for me.” This article shall show that telepresence is bad enough, even without health hazards.
Integral to telepresence is the “telebot”; a remote-controlled robot extension of a distant human. The telebot combines mechanical power and precision with human grace and intuition; the best of both worlds, within its limits.
The telebot’s weak point is the link between man and machine, which has limited bandwidth and indefinite security. The gloves and goggles are limited to sight, sound, and glove-touch; these can be magnified to infrared, ultraviolet, infrasound, ultrasound, micro-touch, and macro-power. The absence of taste, smell, and most touch will give the tele-work experience a detached feel: there but not there.
How can you be in two places at once? When you’re not anywhere at all. But if you’re nowhere at all, then which rules apply to you? Which local labor laws apply when the factory is in cyberspace?
Telepresence is for the 3D’s: too Dirty, Dangerous, or Distant for you to be there personally.
TP > VR
Telepresence is more than Virtual Reality because VR technology is part of TP. But it’s cheaper, faster, and more reliable than VR, because all the hard computations are done by Nature. What’s more, TP has what VR lacks: a point. TP involves real labor in the real physical universe. After the job is done, others can see the result of the work themselves, without the goggles.
VR is billed as an entertainment device, so its market niche is limited to disposable income. These are dispensible during hard times, so VR is vulnerable to the business cycle. TP is counter-cyclic, to the extent that hard times make people work harder. So TP’s market is more secure than VR’s.
VR is for entertainment; it’s to escape the troubles of life. TP is for labor; it confronts the troubles of life. TP > VR to the extent that diligence > negligence.
The purpose of play is training. And what does VR train for? What but telepresence?
TP in Space
TP is how to be where you’d rather not be. Telebots are lighter, cheaper, and tougher than humans, yet smarter and suppler than robots; the best of both. However, lightspeed time delays limit this form of space exploration to Earth orbit, and maybe the Moon.
Telebots do not need food, water, or even air. Telebots can withstand heat, cold, light, dark, radiation, vacuum, and other space hazards that would kill a human, and they can solve real-world problems that would stump a robot. Telebots need no spacesuit; indeed, telebots are the best spacesuit. Via telepresence, soul can travel through space at the speed of light.
TP at Work
Telebots are cheaper than AI, and far more adaptable. It is natural intuition within artificial muscle; body by General Robotics, mind by Mother Nature. The telebot has power, precision, wit, and grace.
It needs no commute. No workplace OSHA rules apply. With worker switching, the robot can stay at work 24 hours a day.
But look at that strange man: he’s blindfolded, gloved, and he dances to shadows. Why his ritualistic motions? He’s a tele-worker! The name “telebot” cuts both ways; for is the man guiding the machine, or is the machine guiding the man?
Tele-work is dream work that does real labor.
TP in the Market
TP commoditizes soul and globalizes labor.
The former because the TP device demands that you pay attention. What flows between worker and distant work is the attention, that is, the consciousness of the worker. TP is all for capitalism’s Marxist ideal; to alienate the work from the worker, via physical distance and sensory limitation.
The latter because TP lets labor flow through a modem cable to anywhere in the world. With TP, an American can work in Tokyo, and a Guatemalan can work in Detroit – and neither leaves their homes! So why ship the job to the workers if you can transmit the worker to the job? What union could underbid a modem to China? And who would need immigrants?
TP at War
War is the ultimate Dirty, Dangerous, and (preferably!) Distant Job; this suggests the TPW, or “telepresence weapon”; the remote-piloted missile, tank, jet, copter, etc. It can go places humans could not go, at accelerations humans could not stand, yet within it is a human presence. The TP soldier is on the battlefield, yet he is not! The shield of distance confers invulnerability; the filter of sense-limits confers disinterest. The armed telebot has mechanical power without mechanical predictability, and human intelligence without human compassion.
The TPW is an imperial weapon, best suited for aggression against the defenseless. It’s the ultimate coward’s weapon. They endanger only for targets; the targeter is safe. With TPW’s, neither honor nor courage is necessary for victory; indeed, the whole point of TPW’s (like the rest of modern weaponry) is to dishonor honor and discourage courage.
Like the rest of modern weaponry, TPW’s discredit war on war’s own terms. They assist warfare’s continued moral decay. One should no more expect courage among modern soldiers than one should expect honor among thieves, and for roughly the same reason. Government pays if and only if crimes pays.
TP’s Grand Future
1. TP has a grand future.
“It can be done, so it must be done.”
2. TP stinks.
One day you will curse the glove as a farmer curses the plow, and you will don the goggles as willingly as a horse dons the bit.
3. TP has a grand future because it stinks.
Its function is to cheapen human life.
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